Eternal: Chapter Six, Part 1

Chapter Six: Turbulent Seas

As I had hoped, Valetta had returned before me.  She gave me all of her information the moment I walked into the apartment.  Mitchell then explained he, Caroline, and Ian had developed a workable timetable but needed direction on how to proceed.

“I’ll get to that in a moment,” I said, glancing over the papers Valetta had handed me before taking the papers Mitchell was offering and skimming over those.  “This should work fine,” I said, nodding.  “Where’s Drei?”  He wasn’t in the room with everyone else.

Valetta, Mitchell, Caroline, and Ian all exchanged looks. “You…he left again,” Valetta replied slowly, almost as if she wished it wasn’t the truth.  “He said he will have returned by the time you finish recruiting.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear; I breathed deeply, closing my eyes for a moment. I could deal with the disappointment later. Right now, I had somewhere to be, something to do.

Walking into the living room, I sat the papers down on the coffee table; the others joined me, silently awaiting my instruction.  I couldn’t help smiling; I understood why Caroline loved being in charge so much.  It might be stressful and time consuming, but it was very empowering knowing everyone was hanging on your every word.

“I’m not going to do hack broadcasts,” I said.  “I might work with those later on, but to start, I want a few commercials and a website.”

“What kind of commercials?” Caroline asked, grinning mischievously.

“Not what you’re thinking,” I told her, smiling.  “I want them to be artistic and to introduce the idea of elementals.  The website will go into more detail about our cause.”

“Any ideas for a slogan?” Ian inquired, grabbing a drawing pad out of his bag and flipping it open.

Thinking for a moment, I remembered what Drei had once told me about the only reason the government would be after us.  “Miracles still exist.”

Ian gazed at me a moment before writing it down and starting to sketch.  “I like it.”

“I’m glad.  Caroline, could you buy the server space and domain name for the website?”

“Sure, but I’m not so tech savvy as to know how to set up a webpage.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said, sitting up.  “You can all work together on that, or anything else.”

“There does not seem to be much to work on, Abriel,” Mitchell said, his hands in his pocket as he regarded me carefully.  “You have not given us enough information for there to be sufficient work.”

“You have enough information to work on concepts.  The execution will be taken care of…”  My eyes scanned over the timetable before me.  “…starting in two weeks.  School will even be out then.”  I studied the timetable a little longer, nodding my head.  “Yeah, that’ll work.  Now, I have to be going.”

If there were further questions, they went unasked. Though that could have been due to a brisk exit on my part. Drei wasn’t there, so I didn’t want to spend time distracted by his absence when I had work to do.